TV viewership this year has surged as people look for news, information and entertainment while being stuck indoors during pandemic lockdowns. That increased interest in late-breaking developments helped to boost viewership of CNN to the best second quarter in its 40-year history, more than doubling total viewers to 1.19 million for the total day.
The increased viewership helped CNN to expand outside of key categories of advertisers such as pharmaceuticals and financial services into youth-oriented brands, Katrina Cukaj, executive vice president of ad sales strategy at WarnerMedia, said in the latest edition of Beet TV’s “Trust in Partnership in a Time of Change” series.
“Dunkin’ Donuts has never aired with us before,” she said, highlighting newer brands that have come to CNN in the past few months. Its CNN.com website in May received 46 million visits from millennials, more than other news brands like the New York Times, NBC News and the Washington Post.
More Family, Kids Programming
With many kids stuck at home and parents in need of activities to keep them occupied, daytime TV ratings surged, according to Nielsen. The media researcher saw a fourfold yearly jump in daytime viewers ages six to 11 during the first month of pandemic lockdowns in the U.S. Meanwhile, the daytime audience for kids ages 12 to 17 more than tripled.
WarnerMedia has expanded its range of programming for families and kids beyond Cartoon Network and Boomerang to include shows featuring characters from DC Comics like Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman. Last year, WarnerMedia added AT&T’s Otter Media to its lineup, adding the social media platform Fullscreen and other digital content.
Cartoon Network, Fullscreen, WB Kids and DC Kids gives WarnerMedia six times the reach of YouTube Kids, or a 173% increase compared with Cartoon Network digital alone, according to metrics compiled by WarnerMedia.
Looking ahead, Cukaj expects the company to keep working on advertising solutions for marketers as the economy recovers and consumer demand picks up.
“We’ll keep working it through to a road to recovery as we go into the latter part of the year and into 2021,” she said.
This video is part of a series titled Trust in Partnership in a Time of Change presented by WarnerMedia. Please visit this page for more of this series.
